The Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism (German: Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung) is a research institute affiliated with the Dresden University of Technology, devoted to research on totalitarianism, particularly communism and fascism/nazism and comparative analyses. Named in honour of Hannah Arendt, the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, the institute was founded by a decision of the Landtag of Saxony shortly after the fall of communism and opened in 1993. Since 2009, historian Günther Heydemann is the institute’s director.